It's not "cool" to not know what one is talking about...

[yiostheoy]

Exhibit A of OP's point /\/\/\/\

If the people who are giddy about being able to redistribute our money tell you, out of their own mouths, that this money grab has nothing to with the environment, tells you to free yourself from that line of thinking, and re-iterates that it is a redistribution of wealth plan,and you still don't get it, then you are too brainwashed to try to get through to. For the last time:

IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer, speaking in November 2010, advised that: “…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”
De facto means actually, or in reality. You need a dose of reality. Global warming is an illusion, like magicians use, to trick the eye and mind.

Here's the real reason for your climate change:
In Their Own Words: Climate Alarmists Debunk Their 'Science'

Exactly I don't want to talk about boring science stuff like C02 ppms, because we know during in the dino era it had 5 times more CO2 in the atmosphere, it has been suggested during the Roman era it has been much warmer, using science we know the deaths history always changed and has been known to change in a blink of an eye like the great Sahara changing tropical to dry fast in cosmic terms.

My specialty is politics news and currant events, my other specialty is temperature instruments been using them for over 30 years and I know how they evolved and how different people read and record them different

I want to talk motives behind the science I want to know facts

Just like gruber and obama manipulating obama care to the public to get it passed and once they succeeded to get it passed an the genie out of the bottle..
They just shrugged their shoulders and said "we bad" with a grin.

The Gruber Confession
.

The article you cited provides a fine illustration of not knowing what one is talking about.

Gruber said, the bill’s authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which issues gold-standard cost estimates of any legislative proposal: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes.” Why? Because “if CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” And yet, the president himself openly insisted that the individual mandate — what you must pay the government if you fail to buy health insurance — was not a tax.​

The fact of the matter is that what is and is not a tax is a matter of legal definition. The sum one must pay for failing to buy health insurance is not a tax. Why isn't it? Because it is a fine, a penalty. What's the difference?

• Being subject to a tax is not avoidable by law abiding people (even for folks who have no tax liability). That's so of ad valorem, transfer, gratuitous transfer, tariffs and income taxes. For all of them whether one is subject to them is not a matter of one's own volition. One might obtain an exemption or credit or other concession that absolves one from having to pay a given tax liability, but that doesn't alter the fact that one was nonetheless subject to the tax. Everyone is subject to a given tax even if everyone doesn't actually incur a tax debt.
• A fine is entirely avoidable. Nobody is involuntarily subject to a fine.

Is the distinction noted above reflective of the abstruse details of law? Absolutely it is; however, as taxes and fines payable to a governmental body are only mandated/enforceable by law, it isn't unreasonable to demand that one know the legal definition of tax vs. law and adhere to it when discussing what is and what is not a tax.

Is there any difference in terms of what sum leaves one's own pocket and enters governmental coffers? Perhaps not, but that's not the point. What is the point, as goes Charles Krauthammer's opinion is that there is no excuse for his failing to distinguish between what is a tax and "what feels like a tax even though it's not actually a tax." I don't what words he may have chosen to communicate to readers that there is a distinction so long as he did so. Well informed readers of his column will know that the penalty for not adhering to the "mandate" isn't a tax; poorly informed readers may not and thus come, if only by dint of their regard for Mr. Krauthammer, to think it in fact is a tax.

Note:
Do I think everything need be distilled to the level of detail noted above? No, of course not. On matters of law or accounting, for example, "hair splitting" is at the heart of what can and often does make very material differences between what's allowable and what's not. Context determines when form rightly carries equal weight with substance.

The fact of the matter is that what is and is not a tax is a matter of legal definition.

Seriously dude and your the one who says I don't know what I am talking about? Him what did the supreme court say about the mandate to approve it?

It was a tax....

There for obama care should never been legal because the Bill originated in the Senate.

Okay...you tell me. What makes it a tax and not a fine? What distinguishes a governmentally assessed fine from a governmentally assessed tax?

Money comes in.

Money goes to govt.

Tax.

 

[Wyatt earp]

If the people who are giddy about being able to redistribute our money tell you, out of their own mouths, that this money grab has nothing to with the environment, tells you to free yourself from that line of thinking, and re-iterates that it is a redistribution of wealth plan,and you still don't get it, then you are too brainwashed to try to get through to. For the last time:

IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer, speaking in November 2010, advised that: “…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”
De facto means actually, or in reality. You need a dose of reality. Global warming is an illusion, like magicians use, to trick the eye and mind.

Here's the real reason for your climate change:
In Their Own Words: Climate Alarmists Debunk Their 'Science'

Exactly I don't want to talk about boring science stuff like C02 ppms, because we know during in the dino era it had 5 times more CO2 in the atmosphere, it has been suggested during the Roman era it has been much warmer, using science we know the deaths history always changed and has been known to change in a blink of an eye like the great Sahara changing tropical to dry fast in cosmic terms.

My specialty is politics news and currant events, my other specialty is temperature instruments been using them for over 30 years and I know how they evolved and how different people read and record them different

I want to talk motives behind the science I want to know facts

Just like gruber and obama manipulating obama care to the public to get it passed and once they succeeded to get it passed an the genie out of the bottle..
They just shrugged their shoulders and said "we bad" with a grin.

The Gruber Confession
.

The article you cited provides a fine illustration of not knowing what one is talking about.

Gruber said, the bill’s authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which issues gold-standard cost estimates of any legislative proposal: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes.” Why? Because “if CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” And yet, the president himself openly insisted that the individual mandate — what you must pay the government if you fail to buy health insurance — was not a tax.​

The fact of the matter is that what is and is not a tax is a matter of legal definition. The sum one must pay for failing to buy health insurance is not a tax. Why isn't it? Because it is a fine, a penalty. What's the difference?

• Being subject to a tax is not avoidable by law abiding people (even for folks who have no tax liability). That's so of ad valorem, transfer, gratuitous transfer, tariffs and income taxes. For all of them whether one is subject to them is not a matter of one's own volition. One might obtain an exemption or credit or other concession that absolves one from having to pay a given tax liability, but that doesn't alter the fact that one was nonetheless subject to the tax. Everyone is subject to a given tax even if everyone doesn't actually incur a tax debt.
• A fine is entirely avoidable. Nobody is involuntarily subject to a fine.

Is the distinction noted above reflective of the abstruse details of law? Absolutely it is; however, as taxes and fines payable to a governmental body are only mandated/enforceable by law, it isn't unreasonable to demand that one know the legal definition of tax vs. law and adhere to it when discussing what is and what is not a tax.

Is there any difference in terms of what sum leaves one's own pocket and enters governmental coffers? Perhaps not, but that's not the point. What is the point, as goes Charles Krauthammer's opinion is that there is no excuse for his failing to distinguish between what is a tax and "what feels like a tax even though it's not actually a tax." I don't what words he may have chosen to communicate to readers that there is a distinction so long as he did so. Well informed readers of his column will know that the penalty for not adhering to the "mandate" isn't a tax; poorly informed readers may not and thus come, if only by dint of their regard for Mr. Krauthammer, to think it in fact is a tax.

Note:
Do I think everything need be distilled to the level of detail noted above? No, of course not. On matters of law or accounting, for example, "hair splitting" is at the heart of what can and often does make very material differences between what's allowable and what's not. Context determines when form rightly carries equal weight with substance.

The fact of the matter is that what is and is not a tax is a matter of legal definition.

Seriously dude and your the one who says I don't know what I am talking about? Him what did the supreme court say about the mandate to approve it?

It was a tax....

There for obama care should never been legal because the Bill originated in the Senate.

Okay...you tell me. What makes it a tax and not a fine? What distinguishes a governmentally assessed fine from a governmentally assessed tax?

Money comes in.

Money goes to govt.

Tax.

How anyone with a brain not believe the mandates was not a tax to begin with is beyond me?

With dang car insurance, driving is a privilege because you drive on public roads so they can say the "Fine" you with out having it, same with driving a truck with out a CDL

But I can drive my car on private one with out one, I can drive the dump truck and 18 wheeler at work on company property with out one.

With the mandate they can't call it a fine , just by breathing and living and not buy it.

Its a tax..

 

[320 Years of History]

we have to take into account the credibility of the Peterson Institute. The Board of Directors is a who's who of business people who would be the very people who would benefit the most from the added growth of the economy that is supposed to be the upside to the displacement of workers.

Yes, I did cite Peterson Institute's study. Peterson is hardly the only source I cited; moreover, the sources I cited are hardly the only ones that present and analyze (while fully disclosing their methodology) the objective/empirical measures of the impacts of NAFTA specifically or free trade in general and that also attest to the net gains from free trade/NAFTA outstripping the net losses.

Who benefits most and/or who benefits least really doesn't matter so long as most people and the nation as a whole realizes a net benefit rather than a net loss. Why? Because the matter is macroeconomic not personal; it's policy made on a large scale with the aim of benefitting the nation on a similar scale.

It doesn't bother me that folks criticize a given macroeconomic policy. All such policies have "winners and losers," and we can all be sure the "losers" will always gripe about having lost in the exchange. What I find totally unacceptable is that the gripers do so without perspective and without giving credence to all aspects of the matter.

• Not acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA."
• Acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA. Even though the nation and people on the whole are better off due to NAFTA, I still prefer free trade. Yes, I know restricted trade will cause price increases and trade wars, but I still prefer it to free trade."

After all, the consideration of any national level policy is not about any one or few thousand people, it's about what's best for the overwhelming majority of people. The first bullet's expression ignores that underlying theme; the second one does not. That is why I can at least respect the speaker of the second bullet's thoughts; that person has made it clear they know the full scope of their preference. They aren't not pretending or intimating that what's good for them is good for most other folks. That's honest. There's integrity in it.

 

[320 Years of History]

Free trade has been a drain on our society as a whole. The gains accrue in the top percentiles of the economic ladder.

Ignoring for the moment whether the substance of the remark (the existence of an overall societal drain) is factually so, what in your mind makes the "top percentiles" not be part of "society as a whole?"

 

[Tehon]

Free trade has been a drain on our society as a whole. The gains accrue in the top percentiles of the economic ladder.

Ignoring for the moment whether the substance of the remark (the existence of an overall societal drain) is factually so, what in your mind makes the "top percentiles" not be part of "society as a whole?"

Really? They are a part of society but they are not the whole of society.

 

[320 Years of History]

http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTAs-Broken-Promises.pdf

The point from the very start of the NAFTA and other free trade agreements has been that the net gains from free trade would be greater than the net losses.

Free trade has been a drain on our society as a whole. The gains accrue in the top percentiles of the economic ladder. You know, the likes of those that promote free trade like the BoD of Peterson Institute.
Telling a displaced worker that he can purchase a lead tainted toy for his kids on the cheap doesn't count as a net gain.

Did you actually read that document you cited?

• "Official government data reveals that nearly five million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost overall since NAFTA took effect. Obviously, not all of these lost U.S. manufacturing jobs – one out of every four of our manufacturing jobs – is due to NAFTA."
  
  Don't you think it'd greatly bolster the argument to quantify the jobs lost due to NAFTA? Several of the documents I linked do just that; I even cited some of those figures.
  
  It's great to see remarks such as the one above, but all they do is bid the reader to ask, "Okay...how many jobs were lost due to NAFTA?" Can you say "disingenuously incomplete?"
• "Under TAA, over 720,000 workers were certified by 2010 (the most recent date for which public information is available) as having lost their jobs due to trade with Canada and Mexico or the shift in factories to those countries."
  
  Okay...so, that 720K jobs between 1992 and 2010, or ~40K jobs per year on average. Can one legitimately declare a macroeconomic policy a disaster based on that metric in a market/economy consisting of some 250M or so jobs? Can you say "contextually duplicitous?"
• "The Department of Commerce established such a program, but after finding fewer than 1,500 specific jobs that could be attributed to NAFTA, the program was shut down because its findings were so bleak."
  
  I have no reason to think 1,500 specific jobs is an accurate figure and I'm certain it's inaccurately depicted. Why? The source I cited earlier notes the figure at some ~3600 workers per month, not in total or at a single point in time. Moreover, the document you've cited seems to indicate both 1500 and 720K jobs were lost in the same span of time, all the while making the two TAA-related claims in the same paragraph. Can you say "incoherent and mendacious?"
• "Specific companies also lobbied for NAFTA by claiming that the deal would boost their own hiring and reduce the need to move jobs to Mexico and Canada. In reality, the vast majority of their promises of job creation failed to materialize and many of these companies have actually moved operations to Mexico and Canada since NAFTA’s passage."
  
  All well and good. The paragraph continues by presenting quantified examples of several companies that offshored X-many jobs and/or laid off X-many workers. The authors make no mention of how many folks those same companies hired during the same period of time. Furthermore, they do not state that the indicated companies had net increases or net decreases in U.S. employee headcount or salaries paid.
  
  How is one to rationally arrive at a sound conclusion based on just "half" of the data? Did the source from which those figures came also report the hirings? I don't know, but I do know that one can't rationally make anything of seeing just half the picture with regard to the company layoffs/offshoring metrics the papers authors chose to cite. Can you again say "disingenuously incomplete?"
• "EPI further calculates that the ballooning trade deficit with Mexico alone destroyed about seven hundred thousand net U.S. jobs between NAFTA’s implementation and 2010."
  
  Tracing the sources of this and the 720K figure noted earlier, one finds it's the same ~700K jobs. Repeating it twice literarily, rhetorically, emphasises the point, but it's the same point. Can you say "rhetorically sophomoric?"

Need I go on?

 

[Tehon]

http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTAs-Broken-Promises.pdf

The point from the very start of the NAFTA and other free trade agreements has been that the net gains from free trade would be greater than the net losses.

Free trade has been a drain on our society as a whole. The gains accrue in the top percentiles of the economic ladder. You know, the likes of those that promote free trade like the BoD of Peterson Institute.
Telling a displaced worker that he can purchase a lead tainted toy for his kids on the cheap doesn't count as a net gain.

Did you actually read that document you cited?

• "Official government data reveals that nearly five million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost overall since NAFTA took effect. Obviously, not all of these lost U.S. manufacturing jobs – one out of every four of our manufacturing jobs – is due to NAFTA."
  
  Don't you think it'd greatly bolster the argument to quantify the jobs lost due to NAFTA? Several of the documents I linked do just that; I even cited some of those figures.
  
  It's great to see remarks such as the one above, but all they do is bid the reader to ask, "Okay...how many jobs were lost due to NAFTA?" Can you say "disingenuously incomplete?"
• "Under TAA, over 720,000 workers were certified by 2010 (the most recent date for which public information is available) as having lost their jobs due to trade with Canada and Mexico or the shift in factories to those countries."
  
  Okay...so, that 720K jobs between 1992 and 2010, or ~40K jobs per year on average. Can one legitimately declare a macroeconomic policy a disaster based on that metric in a market/economy consisting of some 250M or so jobs? Can you say "contextually duplicitous?"
• "The Department of Commerce established such a program, but after finding fewer than 1,500 specific jobs that could be attributed to NAFTA, the program was shut down because its findings were so bleak."
  
  I have no reason to think 1,500 specific jobs is an accurate figure and I'm certain it's inaccurately depicted. Why? The source I cited earlier notes the figure at some ~3600 workers per month, not in total or at a single point in time. Moreover, the document you've cited seems to indicate both 1500 and 720K jobs were lost in the same span of time, all the while making the two TAA-related claims in the same paragraph. Can you say "incoherent and mendacious?"
• "Specific companies also lobbied for NAFTA by claiming that the deal would boost their own hiring and reduce the need to move jobs to Mexico and Canada. In reality, the vast majority of their promises of job creation failed to materialize and many of these companies have actually moved operations to Mexico and Canada since NAFTA’s passage."
  
  All well and good. The paragraph continues by presenting quantified examples of several companies that offshored X-many jobs and/or laid off X-many workers. The authors make no mention of how many folks those same companies hired during the same period of time. Furthermore, they do not state that the indicated companies had net increases or net decreases in U.S. employee headcount or salaries paid.
  
  How is one to rationally arrive at a sound conclusion based on just "half" of the data? Did the source from which those figures came also report the hirings? I don't know, but I do know that one can't rationally make anything of seeing just half the picture with regard to the company layoffs/offshoring metrics the papers authors chose to cite. Can you again say "disingenuously incomplete?"
• "EPI further calculates that the ballooning trade deficit with Mexico alone destroyed about seven hundred thousand net U.S. jobs between NAFTA’s implementation and 2010."
  
  Tracing the sources of this and the 720K figure noted earlier, one finds it's the same ~700K jobs. Repeating it twice literarily, rhetorically, emphasises the point, but it's the same point. Can you say "rhetorically sophomoric?"

Need I go on?

Did you actually read that document you cited?

No, I only used it to cite the PIIE prediction.

 

[320 Years of History]

Free trade has been a drain on our society as a whole. The gains accrue in the top percentiles of the economic ladder.

Ignoring for the moment whether the substance of the remark (the existence of an overall societal drain) is factually so, what in your mind makes the "top percentiles" not be part of "society as a whole?"

Really? They are a part of society but they are not the whole of society.

Neither are "non top percentiles" the whole of society.

 

[Wyatt earp]

we have to take into account the credibility of the Peterson Institute. The Board of Directors is a who's who of business people who would be the very people who would benefit the most from the added growth of the economy that is supposed to be the upside to the displacement of workers.

Yes, I did cite Peterson Institute's study. Peterson is hardly the only source I cited; moreover, the sources I cited are hardly the only ones that present and analyze (while fully disclosing their methodology) the objective/empirical measures of the impacts of NAFTA specifically or free trade in general and that also attest to the net gains from free trade/NAFTA outstripping the net losses.

Who benefits most and/or who benefits least really doesn't matter so long as most people and the nation as a whole realizes a net benefit rather than a net loss. Why? Because the matter is macroeconomic not personal; it's policy made on a large scale with the aim of benefitting the nation on a similar scale.

It doesn't bother me that folks criticize a given macroeconomic policy. All such policies have "winners and losers," and we can all be sure the "losers" will always gripe about having lost in the exchange. What I find totally unacceptable is that the gripers do so without perspective and without giving credence to all aspects of the matter.

• Not acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA."
• Acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA. Even though the nation and people on the whole are better off due to NAFTA, I still prefer free trade. Yes, I know restricted trade will cause price increases and trade wars, but I still prefer it to free trade."

After all, the consideration of any national level policy is not about any one or few thousand people, it's about what's best for the overwhelming majority of people. The first bullet's expression ignores that underlying theme; the second one does not. That is why I can at least respect the speaker of the second bullet's thoughts; that person has made it clear they know the full scope of their preference. They aren't not pretending or intimating that what's good for them is good for most other folks. That's honest. There's integrity in it.

Free trade Will even itself out in the long we wittnesed that with Japan, we are witnessing that with China, Mexico is a fluke in that ideology being so close to the U.S.

Its taken along time for the industrial revolution to circle the globe, but it will complete it's circle unless technology stops it in it's tracks with 3 d printers and such.

 

[320 Years of History]

http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTAs-Broken-Promises.pdf

The point from the very start of the NAFTA and other free trade agreements has been that the net gains from free trade would be greater than the net losses.

Free trade has been a drain on our society as a whole. The gains accrue in the top percentiles of the economic ladder. You know, the likes of those that promote free trade like the BoD of Peterson Institute.
Telling a displaced worker that he can purchase a lead tainted toy for his kids on the cheap doesn't count as a net gain.

Did you actually read that document you cited?

• "Official government data reveals that nearly five million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost overall since NAFTA took effect. Obviously, not all of these lost U.S. manufacturing jobs – one out of every four of our manufacturing jobs – is due to NAFTA."
  
  Don't you think it'd greatly bolster the argument to quantify the jobs lost due to NAFTA? Several of the documents I linked do just that; I even cited some of those figures.
  
  It's great to see remarks such as the one above, but all they do is bid the reader to ask, "Okay...how many jobs were lost due to NAFTA?" Can you say "disingenuously incomplete?"
• "Under TAA, over 720,000 workers were certified by 2010 (the most recent date for which public information is available) as having lost their jobs due to trade with Canada and Mexico or the shift in factories to those countries."
  
  Okay...so, that 720K jobs between 1992 and 2010, or ~40K jobs per year on average. Can one legitimately declare a macroeconomic policy a disaster based on that metric in a market/economy consisting of some 250M or so jobs? Can you say "contextually duplicitous?"
• "The Department of Commerce established such a program, but after finding fewer than 1,500 specific jobs that could be attributed to NAFTA, the program was shut down because its findings were so bleak."
  
  I have no reason to think 1,500 specific jobs is an accurate figure and I'm certain it's inaccurately depicted. Why? The source I cited earlier notes the figure at some ~3600 workers per month, not in total or at a single point in time. Moreover, the document you've cited seems to indicate both 1500 and 720K jobs were lost in the same span of time, all the while making the two TAA-related claims in the same paragraph. Can you say "incoherent and mendacious?"
• "Specific companies also lobbied for NAFTA by claiming that the deal would boost their own hiring and reduce the need to move jobs to Mexico and Canada. In reality, the vast majority of their promises of job creation failed to materialize and many of these companies have actually moved operations to Mexico and Canada since NAFTA’s passage."
  
  All well and good. The paragraph continues by presenting quantified examples of several companies that offshored X-many jobs and/or laid off X-many workers. The authors make no mention of how many folks those same companies hired during the same period of time. Furthermore, they do not state that the indicated companies had net increases or net decreases in U.S. employee headcount or salaries paid.
  
  How is one to rationally arrive at a sound conclusion based on just "half" of the data? Did the source from which those figures came also report the hirings? I don't know, but I do know that one can't rationally make anything of seeing just half the picture with regard to the company layoffs/offshoring metrics the papers authors chose to cite. Can you again say "disingenuously incomplete?"
• "EPI further calculates that the ballooning trade deficit with Mexico alone destroyed about seven hundred thousand net U.S. jobs between NAFTA’s implementation and 2010."
  
  Tracing the sources of this and the 720K figure noted earlier, one finds it's the same ~700K jobs. Repeating it twice literarily, rhetorically, emphasises the point, but it's the same point. Can you say "rhetorically sophomoric?"

Need I go on?

Did you actually read that document you cited?

No, I only used it to cite the PIIE prediction.

Red:
Okay.

Blue:
Do you truly mean "cite," or might you mean "refute?" Just asking....I may or may not have something to say about it upon learning the answer.

 

[Tehon]

we have to take into account the credibility of the Peterson Institute. The Board of Directors is a who's who of business people who would be the very people who would benefit the most from the added growth of the economy that is supposed to be the upside to the displacement of workers.

Yes, I did cite Peterson Institute's study. Peterson is hardly the only source I cited; moreover, the sources I cited are hardly the only ones that present and analyze (while fully disclosing their methodology) the objective/empirical measures of the impacts of NAFTA specifically or free trade in general and that also attest to the net gains from free trade/NAFTA outstripping the net losses.

Who benefits most and/or who benefits least really doesn't matter so long as most people and the nation as a whole realizes a net benefit rather than a net loss. Why? Because the matter is macroeconomic not personal; it's policy made on a large scale with the aim of benefitting the nation on a similar scale.

It doesn't bother me that folks criticize a given macroeconomic policy. All such policies have "winners and losers," and we can all be sure the "losers" will always gripe about having lost in the exchange. What I find totally unacceptable is that the gripers do so without perspective and without giving credence to all aspects of the matter.

• Not acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA."
• Acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA. Even though the nation and people on the whole are better off due to NAFTA, I still prefer free trade. Yes, I know restricted trade will cause price increases and trade wars, but I still prefer it to free trade."

After all, the consideration of any national level policy is not about any one or few thousand people, it's about what's best for the overwhelming majority of people. The first bullet's expression ignores that underlying theme; the second one does not. That is why I can at least respect the speaker of the second bullet's thoughts; that person has made it clear they know the full scope of their preference. They aren't not pretending or intimating that what's good for them is good for most other folks. That's honest. There's integrity in it.

Free trade Will even itself out in the long we wittnesed that with Japan, we are witnessing that with China, Mexico is a fluke in that ideology being so close to the U.S.

Its taken along time for the industrial revolution to circle the globe, but it will complete it's circle unless technology stops it in it's tracks with 3 d printers and such.

The TPP is going to build a new economic zone of cheap exploitable labor (Vietnam) that is going to counter rising costs in China. Then there are the other costs associated with free trade like the loss of sovereignty of the peoples governments to protect their own interests against the rapaciousness of the capitalists. There is no end to the desire for more profit.

 

[Tehon]

http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTAs-Broken-Promises.pdf

The point from the very start of the NAFTA and other free trade agreements has been that the net gains from free trade would be greater than the net losses.

Free trade has been a drain on our society as a whole. The gains accrue in the top percentiles of the economic ladder. You know, the likes of those that promote free trade like the BoD of Peterson Institute.
Telling a displaced worker that he can purchase a lead tainted toy for his kids on the cheap doesn't count as a net gain.

Did you actually read that document you cited?

• "Official government data reveals that nearly five million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost overall since NAFTA took effect. Obviously, not all of these lost U.S. manufacturing jobs – one out of every four of our manufacturing jobs – is due to NAFTA."
  
  Don't you think it'd greatly bolster the argument to quantify the jobs lost due to NAFTA? Several of the documents I linked do just that; I even cited some of those figures.
  
  It's great to see remarks such as the one above, but all they do is bid the reader to ask, "Okay...how many jobs were lost due to NAFTA?" Can you say "disingenuously incomplete?"
• "Under TAA, over 720,000 workers were certified by 2010 (the most recent date for which public information is available) as having lost their jobs due to trade with Canada and Mexico or the shift in factories to those countries."
  
  Okay...so, that 720K jobs between 1992 and 2010, or ~40K jobs per year on average. Can one legitimately declare a macroeconomic policy a disaster based on that metric in a market/economy consisting of some 250M or so jobs? Can you say "contextually duplicitous?"
• "The Department of Commerce established such a program, but after finding fewer than 1,500 specific jobs that could be attributed to NAFTA, the program was shut down because its findings were so bleak."
  
  I have no reason to think 1,500 specific jobs is an accurate figure and I'm certain it's inaccurately depicted. Why? The source I cited earlier notes the figure at some ~3600 workers per month, not in total or at a single point in time. Moreover, the document you've cited seems to indicate both 1500 and 720K jobs were lost in the same span of time, all the while making the two TAA-related claims in the same paragraph. Can you say "incoherent and mendacious?"
• "Specific companies also lobbied for NAFTA by claiming that the deal would boost their own hiring and reduce the need to move jobs to Mexico and Canada. In reality, the vast majority of their promises of job creation failed to materialize and many of these companies have actually moved operations to Mexico and Canada since NAFTA’s passage."
  
  All well and good. The paragraph continues by presenting quantified examples of several companies that offshored X-many jobs and/or laid off X-many workers. The authors make no mention of how many folks those same companies hired during the same period of time. Furthermore, they do not state that the indicated companies had net increases or net decreases in U.S. employee headcount or salaries paid.
  
  How is one to rationally arrive at a sound conclusion based on just "half" of the data? Did the source from which those figures came also report the hirings? I don't know, but I do know that one can't rationally make anything of seeing just half the picture with regard to the company layoffs/offshoring metrics the papers authors chose to cite. Can you again say "disingenuously incomplete?"
• "EPI further calculates that the ballooning trade deficit with Mexico alone destroyed about seven hundred thousand net U.S. jobs between NAFTA’s implementation and 2010."
  
  Tracing the sources of this and the 720K figure noted earlier, one finds it's the same ~700K jobs. Repeating it twice literarily, rhetorically, emphasises the point, but it's the same point. Can you say "rhetorically sophomoric?"

Need I go on?

Did you actually read that document you cited?

No, I only used it to cite the PIIE prediction.

Red:
Okay.

Blue:
Do you truly mean "cite," or might you mean "refute?" Just asking....I may or may not have something to say about it upon learning the answer.

Do you truly mean "cite," or might you mean "refute?

Yes, I meant cite.

 

[Wilbur Right]

Who benefits most and/or who benefits least really doesn't matter so long as most people and the nation as a whole realizes a net benefit rather than a net loss.

While it may not matter who benefits most or least to those studying macro economics, to those tens of thousands who no longer have a job as good as they once had, a job that afforded them a lifestyle they enjoyed, it matters to them.

How many economists, lawyers, accountants and upper level management types do you know who lost their jobs to free trade agreements?

I lived in a general motors city. Dayton Oh absolutely depended on the jobs generated by GM and Chrysler. The secondary jobs those large manufacturers generated was icing on the cake.
Since GM moved out (NAFTA related move) those jobs are gone and have proved to be irreplaceable. Dayton as a city is nowhere near what it once was. Sure some are doing great. But before if you were not doing well financially, it was your fault. There were that many good jobs available, at one time.

Did some workers find jobs with Honda in Marysville. Sure. But Honda doesn't come close to needing the amount of workers GM used to need.

There is a level of dissociation you sometimes exhibit, where your data driven analysis seems void of the feeling of personal loss experienced by hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens.
And just acknowledging the free trade agreements caused some job loss isn't feeling the pain of those lost jobs.

I understand your POV isn't to feel the pain and you make every effort to educate us masses as to how good we have it because of free trade.

But not everyone except those that didn't feel any pain, or who may have benefited from free trade agreements , will agree with you. For those who have witnessed the devastation brought on by shipping large numbers of good paying jobs out of the country, skepticism will abound.

 

[320 Years of History]

While it may not matter who benefits most or least to those studying macro economics, to those tens of thousands who no longer have a job as good as they once had, a job that afforded them a lifestyle they enjoyed, it matters to them.

I have, just as have economic researchers, acknowledged this.

How many economists, lawyers, accountants and upper level management types do you know who lost their jobs to free trade agreements?

How many I know or don't know is irrelevant.

• I don't know anyone who's lost their job due to offshoring, yet there are folks who have.
• I know and know of folks who've lost their job due to technology implementations in organizations that didn't offshore anything, but even knowing (of) them doesn't have a thing to do with whether they experienced a job loss.
• I also know of administrative folks (mid to lower level) who've lost their jobs due to multinational corporations offshoring their "back office" (accounting (note: everyone in a company's accounting department is not an accountant, in fact, few of those folks are; most are bookkeepers, which is not the same thing as being an accountant), finance operations to lower labor cost areas. In some of those relocations, some people didn't lose their jobs because they opted instead to move to the new location, but had they not made that choice, they would have lost their job.
• The people whom I know who are accountants, attorneys, business managers, and so on also are business owners or on a career track to become owners. Thus, unless they screw up in a big way, they are and will remain in control of their career prospects.
• Not related but hopefully insightful: Part of the reason I am an international consultant is that years ago I could tell that at some point (I didn't know precisely when), the work I do wouldn't eventually be sought at the billing rate I demand because the industry/service area will by then have matured. Thus I began to develop myself for delivering my services to non-U.S. organizations. That's what I do now because that's where the growth is for what I do. Of course, I directly manage a large project in the U.S. once in a while, but in the past decade, ~80% of my projects have had nothing to do with the domestic units of U.S. corporations.
  
  Were I to have insisted on working exclusively in the U.S., I'd have had to evolve my skills or diversify them to do so. Quite simply, I didn't want to, so I instead directed my career to where what I wanted to do remains in demand. It's Marketing 101; it's just that I, as does everyone else, had to apply the lessons of marketing to the "thing" I'm marketing, which is myself, my labor. That's no different than what everyone must do, and like everyone else, I have to plan ahead and choose where to direct my career on an ongoing basis. This sort of thing isn't static; what one does now that works isn't guaranteed to be the right choice later.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It's worth noting that of the four strategic options shown in the image above, all four of them of them may or may not be available at all times, but at least one of them will always be available and executable. Whether one will be effective implementing any of the given strategies depends on the tactical approach one uses to do so.

FWIW, I've looked for credible figures that identify the nature and extent of management and professional services job losses that are attributable to NAFTA specifically and free trade in general. The closest I've come by is in the report from the CRS that I cited earlier, but even it doesn't expressly address management/professional services jobs gained or lost due to NAFTA. Perhaps nobody gives a damn about those workers?

A couple (but not sole) critical traits distinguish management/professional services jobs from those typically thought of as "manufacturing jobs,"

• They, along with highly skilled physical labor roles, are jobs that align with the U.S.' comparative advantage. (Theory of comparative advantage.)
  • Our Comparative Advantage
    During the early stages of the development of a new technology, the United States has a comparative advantage in the production of the products enabled by this innovation. However, once these technologies become well-understood and production processes are designed that can make use of less-skilled labor, production will migrate to countries with less expensive labor.
    
    These economic forces are not substantially different from the economic forces that lead to most children’s toys being developed in the United States and mass-produced in China and other developing countries. Once the production process for a product can be standardized to such an extent that there are potential producers around the world, global competition will drive production to lowest cost country, and thereby benefit all consumers of these products.
    
  • What Ideas Are Worth: The Value of Intellectual Capital And Intangible Assets in the American Economy
    
    As the world’s most advanced economy, the United States and its multinational companies use their intellectual capital and intangible assets to create comparative advantages in global markets. Therefore, many industries which are highly idea-intensive, measured by intellectual capital and intangible assets, occupy prominent positions in U.S. exports. Pharmaceuticals and medicines, for example, were the third largest class of U.S. exports in 2009, exceeded only by semiconductors and aerospace products and parts.
    
  • Has US Comparative Advantage Changed?
    [I can't copy and paste passages from this document. The author's aim is to analyze and discuss the implications of the shift in U.S. comparative advantage -- from all levels/forms of production (skilled and unskilled) and intellectual services to that of skilled production and intellectual services -- on the sustainability of deficits. That said, the point I'm making here is nonetheless discussed and established in the process of making the author's points about the sustainability of deficits.]
• People with these jobs are "knowledge workers." Thier jobs are those one obtains and keeps based on intellectual capital and almost no physical ability rather than based on physical ability and some intellectual capital. Intellectual capital is a composite comprising human capital, structural or organizational capital and relationship capital. Human capital, as intellectual capital component, includes individual capabilities, knowledge, skills, expertise and experience of employees and managers in a company. Knowledge, in this context, implies knowledge relevant for problem solving, as well as capability to constantly upgrade one's "tank" of knowledge and skills acquired on the basis of learning and experience.
  
  What makes management/professional services jobs different is that the intellectual capital holders of them develop can be taken and applied at any company. Thus, the manufacturing industry accountants and managers who may have lost their jobs when a large factory moved offshore can nonetheless use their skills at another company. Accordingly, if they don't find a comparable new job in the aftermath of an offshoring, it's more likely because they don't want to (don't want to find a comparable job, or don't want to do "something" that accepting that comparable new job entails) than it is that they just can't get a comparable new job.

What does all that mean for displaced physical labor workers? It means that they need to "get with the program," that is, transform themselves and become "knowledge workers." Of course, for many such workers, that means getting new training, not griping about the fact that there aren't "good" manufacturing jobs.

Realizing this, I favored Bernie Sanders and his "free college/trade school" policy. Quite simply, the unskilled labor manufacturing jobs some people want aren't coming back, and all the lamentations in the world won't motivate companies to return their factory operations to the U.S. until U.S. workers get paid materially less than laborers outside the U.S.

Barring one's willingness to obtain that training (and/or support policies/policy makers that make it available to them at very low or no cost and then obtaining it) and transform oneself into a different kind of worker -- accountant, manager, lawyer, welder, petroleum production worker, product designer, project manager, software developer, nurse, etc. -- one has a few choices that are exactly what's depicted in the Ansoff Matrix shown above:

• Take whatever job one can get and quit hoping for a job that's not going to exist in the U.S.
• Rely on the kindness of others and quit hoping for a job that's not going to exist in the U.S.
• Move to a place that has a comparative advantage in performing unskilled labor, along with a lower cost of living, and be middle class in that locality. Coming from the U.S., one will have a distinct advantage over the existing locals due to one's prior experience.
  
  I know a lot of folks think that's a terrible proposition, but I suspect many folks who feel that way also have never been anywhere outside the U.S. and seen what a middle class lifestyle is like in those countries. Go to Mexico, China, India, Argentina, a Central American country, or other countries with a greatly expanding middle class, and check it out. Believe it or not, middle class lifestyles in those places are very much like one in the U.S., it just doesn't take as much money to live that way in those places.
  
  There's a reason it's said of NYC that if one can make it there one can make it anywhere. It's so damned expensive in NYC that the only way to make it is to do something that pays highly. Well, that's also true of the U.S. vs. other countries. If what one does or is willing to do doesn't pay well enough to support a U.S. middle class existence, then moving to a place where what one does/will do can support a middle class existence is the rational choice to make.

Honda doesn't come close to needing the amount of workers GM used to need.

I presume you are referring to the related auto parts/components producers such as Dayton's Delphi. I don't know if they do or do not, and you've provided no references that corroborate your assertion. I quickly looked to see if I could find any that do. Here is what I found:

• http://www.fisherhonda.com/honda-ac...cars-with-the-most-north-american-made-parts/
  
  According to Honda, “94 percent of Honda and Acura vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2013 were manufactured in North America, the highest percentage of any international automaker.” On top of that, 70 percent of the Honda Accord’s content is sourced from the U.S. and Canada. Fifteen percent is sourced from Japan. It is not stated where the other 15 percent of content is from. The Civic is comprised of 65 percent of content that is from the U.S. and Canada. Between 15 and 20 percent is also sourced from Japan. The additional origin of the remaining 15 to 20 percent wasn’t reported. Here’s a look at the Accord, Civic, and Honda’s assembly plants.
  
  
• HONDA MOTOR CO LTD 20-F
  
  Honda manufactures the major components and parts used in its products, including engines, frames and transmissions. Other components and parts, such as shock absorbers, electrical equipment and tires, are purchased from numerous suppliers. The principal raw materials used by Honda are steel plate, aluminum, special steels, steel tubes, paints, plastics and zinc, which are purchased from several suppliers. The most important raw material purchased is steel plate, accounting for approximately 45% of Honda’s total purchases of raw materials.

A few notes:

• I'm not opposed to accepting the assertion you made is true, for it'd merely be a fact, and facts are what they are. I am opposed to accepting the assertion you made is true solely on the basis that you said it, which is all I have right now for accepting it.
• Regardless of how close Honda comes to needed the quantity of workers GM once did, it's also true that given GM's having closed down Olds and Pontiac, GM also doesn't come close to needing the quantity of workers it once did. Even were GM to make 100% of every car it sells in the U.S., it still would not need as many workers as it formerly did due in large part to production automation.
  
  Production automation is very important in any discussion about manufacturing jobs lost. It's not as though companies like GM and others went from building their goods using U.S. workers only and then went abroad and continued to use human labor to do the same tasks. What they did, wherever possible, was implement production automation and optimization technologies and use lower cost labor where

your data driven analysis seems void of the feeling of personal loss experienced by hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens.

Of course the actual situational analysis i've presented is devoid of that emotional component; it wouldn't be objective analysis were it not absent the emotional bias you suggest. My sympathy for those folks' situation is found among the solution options I have suggested. Specifically, I would not be supportive of Mr. Sanders' "free education/training" initiative were I not sympathetic to people's need to have good jobs, the nation's need for people to have good jobs, and the fact that unemployed unskilled workers need to evolve their skillsets to include aptitudes that are in demand in the U.S.

The road to overall emotional satisfaction is paved with loads of objective analysis and decision making. One aspect of that analysis requires one to consider oneself in terms of basic economics. One is a supplier of something, one's labor. People are generally capable of performing a variety of types of labor. To maximize one's profits (wage), one should provide a type of labor that is highly demanded. Sure, one could provide a commodity form of labor that is indistinguishable from that which everyone else can provide, but doing something that some others, but not all others, can provide pays a lot better.

(Remember that with commodities, the name of the game is "provide more of the commodity where it's demanded." Well, an individual can only perform "so much" work in a day, and however much that be, it's not appreciably more than can any other individual. Even the best "widget assembler" in the country doesn't earn materially more than the worst one; they both are struggling to make ends meet. Thus if one wants to be profitable selling commodity labor, one should open a temp/staffing agency or recruitment firm.)

So, when considering what one will for work, and when I write about viable and effective solution approaches for folks who seek (better) jobs, yes, I do so without the "emotional baggage." There's a time and place for that "baggage," but in the process of evaluating how to resolve the problem of being under/unemployed is neither the time nor the place. That problem solving process is best performed not by considering what one (another) likes and wants, but rather by (1) identifying the actual facts of the situation (not wasting time arguing over whether they are facts or wishing they were not or thinking the should not be the facts), (2) considering what options exist to overcome the problem, (3) determining how long it takes to realize results from each option, (4) figuring out how long one can wait given one's specific needs, and (5) choosing the one that will achieve the required goal in the shortest amount of time that one has available to wait for those goals to happen.

I am quite capable of being sympathetic to others' circumstances and that they find themselves in them. I have no emotional leanings, however, when it comes to finding and implementing solutions to the problem. Nearly all of what you've seen me write about has to do with the latter. Where do folks observe and experience my more sympathetic side? I'll let you guess...I've also discussed that too, and I think you've read enough of my posts to know the answer.

you make every effort to educate us masses as to how good we have it because of free trade.

There's no question that a number of my posts are didactic; however, the purpose and themes of them aren't to inform folks of "how good we have it because of free trade." One purpose as goes my discussions about free trade is to highlight that the conclusion that free trade is the sole or dominant cause of the problem is mistaken. I won't deny that free trade (NAFTA in particular) has had an impact, but, as the rigorously developed reference original research materials I constantly present show, free trade (NAFTA) are a minor contributor.

For those who have witnessed the devastation brought on by shipping large numbers of good paying jobs out of the country, skepticism will abound.

Yes it will. That skepticism is substantively useless in any individual's quest to overcome their problem. Sure, they can find sources that will palliate their ire and disdain for free trade. The central point I've been making is that their anger is misplaced.

• Folks who "get over" whether free trade is the cause or whether something else is, i.e, ignore their skepticism, and instead endeavor to do what they must to "make it" in the world that is "now," they will find a happy place in the current economy. Once they are in that place, then they can consider whether free trade was the main cause for why they once were not in that happy place.

So the next time you encounter a skeptic of sorts. Ask them this:

• Do you have a good job? If they do, ask them why they think what they think given the wealth of objective and rigorous research that shows they are mistaken. Ask them why they insist on accepting the conclusions drawn by various partisan groups instead of reading the original research that has been "cherry picked" to make a point. Their having a good job means they don't have to work all the time and eat and sleep the rest of the time. Accordingly, they have the time to read original scholarly research instead of reading Breitbart, listening to Fox/MSNBC, or whatever other distiller of original research that captures their fancy.
• What is is "Joe Displaced Worker" supposed to do right now to begin altering his situation? Ask them that because the fact is that "Joe" doesn't have time to wait for Mrs. Clinton, Trump or any other politician or political process to make his life better. The U.S. is a democratic republic, not a monarchy, benevolent dictatorship or papacy. The folks in power simply cannot effect change in six months or less, but on his own and acting with deliberacy, "Joe" can initiate effecting the changes he must make happen for himself. No, short of buying a winning lottery ticket, "Joe" won't achieve "overnight" results, but neither will elected officials, most especially given that for the next three months, the primary thing elected folks are focused on is getting reelected, and they'll have that same focus for another three months, two years from now.

 

[320 Years of History]

we have to take into account the credibility of the Peterson Institute. The Board of Directors is a who's who of business people who would be the very people who would benefit the most from the added growth of the economy that is supposed to be the upside to the displacement of workers.

Yes, I did cite Peterson Institute's study. Peterson is hardly the only source I cited; moreover, the sources I cited are hardly the only ones that present and analyze (while fully disclosing their methodology) the objective/empirical measures of the impacts of NAFTA specifically or free trade in general and that also attest to the net gains from free trade/NAFTA outstripping the net losses.

Who benefits most and/or who benefits least really doesn't matter so long as most people and the nation as a whole realizes a net benefit rather than a net loss. Why? Because the matter is macroeconomic not personal; it's policy made on a large scale with the aim of benefitting the nation on a similar scale.

It doesn't bother me that folks criticize a given macroeconomic policy. All such policies have "winners and losers," and we can all be sure the "losers" will always gripe about having lost in the exchange. What I find totally unacceptable is that the gripers do so without perspective and without giving credence to all aspects of the matter.

• Not acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA."
• Acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA. Even though the nation and people on the whole are better off due to NAFTA, I still prefer free trade. Yes, I know restricted trade will cause price increases and trade wars, but I still prefer it to free trade."

After all, the consideration of any national level policy is not about any one or few thousand people, it's about what's best for the overwhelming majority of people. The first bullet's expression ignores that underlying theme; the second one does not. That is why I can at least respect the speaker of the second bullet's thoughts; that person has made it clear they know the full scope of their preference. They aren't not pretending or intimating that what's good for them is good for most other folks. That's honest. There's integrity in it.

Free trade Will even itself out in the long we wittnesed that with Japan, we are witnessing that with China, Mexico is a fluke in that ideology being so close to the U.S.

Its taken along time for the industrial revolution to circle the globe, but it will complete it's circle unless technology stops it in it's tracks with 3 d printers and such.

The TPP is going to build a new economic zone of cheap exploitable labor (Vietnam) that is going to counter rising costs in China. Then there are the other costs associated with free trade like the loss of sovereignty of the peoples governments to protect their own interests against the rapaciousness of the capitalists. There is no end to the desire for more profit.

It likely will, but so what if it does?

• China's workers will become ticked off because they demand higher wages than do Vietnamese workers and companies don't want to pay higher wages. Unskilled U.S. workers' situation won't change merely because the companies seeking low cost labor move from China to Vietnam.
• The price of goods produced by even lower cost laborers will go down or go up more slowly. As a consumer, I'm okay with that. Aren't you?

 

[320 Years of History]

http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTAs-Broken-Promises.pdf

The point from the very start of the NAFTA and other free trade agreements has been that the net gains from free trade would be greater than the net losses.

Free trade has been a drain on our society as a whole. The gains accrue in the top percentiles of the economic ladder. You know, the likes of those that promote free trade like the BoD of Peterson Institute.
Telling a displaced worker that he can purchase a lead tainted toy for his kids on the cheap doesn't count as a net gain.

Did you actually read that document you cited?

• "Official government data reveals that nearly five million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost overall since NAFTA took effect. Obviously, not all of these lost U.S. manufacturing jobs – one out of every four of our manufacturing jobs – is due to NAFTA."
  
  Don't you think it'd greatly bolster the argument to quantify the jobs lost due to NAFTA? Several of the documents I linked do just that; I even cited some of those figures.
  
  It's great to see remarks such as the one above, but all they do is bid the reader to ask, "Okay...how many jobs were lost due to NAFTA?" Can you say "disingenuously incomplete?"
• "Under TAA, over 720,000 workers were certified by 2010 (the most recent date for which public information is available) as having lost their jobs due to trade with Canada and Mexico or the shift in factories to those countries."
  
  Okay...so, that 720K jobs between 1992 and 2010, or ~40K jobs per year on average. Can one legitimately declare a macroeconomic policy a disaster based on that metric in a market/economy consisting of some 250M or so jobs? Can you say "contextually duplicitous?"
• "The Department of Commerce established such a program, but after finding fewer than 1,500 specific jobs that could be attributed to NAFTA, the program was shut down because its findings were so bleak."
  
  I have no reason to think 1,500 specific jobs is an accurate figure and I'm certain it's inaccurately depicted. Why? The source I cited earlier notes the figure at some ~3600 workers per month, not in total or at a single point in time. Moreover, the document you've cited seems to indicate both 1500 and 720K jobs were lost in the same span of time, all the while making the two TAA-related claims in the same paragraph. Can you say "incoherent and mendacious?"
• "Specific companies also lobbied for NAFTA by claiming that the deal would boost their own hiring and reduce the need to move jobs to Mexico and Canada. In reality, the vast majority of their promises of job creation failed to materialize and many of these companies have actually moved operations to Mexico and Canada since NAFTA’s passage."
  
  All well and good. The paragraph continues by presenting quantified examples of several companies that offshored X-many jobs and/or laid off X-many workers. The authors make no mention of how many folks those same companies hired during the same period of time. Furthermore, they do not state that the indicated companies had net increases or net decreases in U.S. employee headcount or salaries paid.
  
  How is one to rationally arrive at a sound conclusion based on just "half" of the data? Did the source from which those figures came also report the hirings? I don't know, but I do know that one can't rationally make anything of seeing just half the picture with regard to the company layoffs/offshoring metrics the papers authors chose to cite. Can you again say "disingenuously incomplete?"
• "EPI further calculates that the ballooning trade deficit with Mexico alone destroyed about seven hundred thousand net U.S. jobs between NAFTA’s implementation and 2010."
  
  Tracing the sources of this and the 720K figure noted earlier, one finds it's the same ~700K jobs. Repeating it twice literarily, rhetorically, emphasises the point, but it's the same point. Can you say "rhetorically sophomoric?"

Need I go on?

Did you actually read that document you cited?

No, I only used it to cite the PIIE prediction.

Red:
Okay.

Blue:
Do you truly mean "cite," or might you mean "refute?" Just asking....I may or may not have something to say about it upon learning the answer.

Do you truly mean "cite," or might you mean "refute?

Yes, I meant cite.

Okay...then the remarks I posted earlier (see quote above) are all I have to say for now. Thank you.

 

[Hiryuu]

So, while, yes, free trade, and NAFTA in particular, can and does cost some jobs. Does it, or at least the NAFTA free trade agreement -- Lord only knows why folks rail so loudly against NAFTA; it's not our only free trade agreement -- result in job losses that justify all the rancor and rhetoric we hear these days? Not even close, although, I'm sure the relatively few folks (amongst the 250M+ American workforce) who've lost their jobs due to NAFTA won't see it that way. The thing is that neither will folks like you who fail to critically/objectively question and answer whether NAFTA or something else might in fact be the cause of the lost jobs.

NAFTA has a greater impact on US jobs losses than cows farting in field have on climate change.

 

[320 Years of History]

NAFTA has a greater impact on US jobs losses than cows farting in field have on climate change.

 

[Tehon]

we have to take into account the credibility of the Peterson Institute. The Board of Directors is a who's who of business people who would be the very people who would benefit the most from the added growth of the economy that is supposed to be the upside to the displacement of workers.

Yes, I did cite Peterson Institute's study. Peterson is hardly the only source I cited; moreover, the sources I cited are hardly the only ones that present and analyze (while fully disclosing their methodology) the objective/empirical measures of the impacts of NAFTA specifically or free trade in general and that also attest to the net gains from free trade/NAFTA outstripping the net losses.

Who benefits most and/or who benefits least really doesn't matter so long as most people and the nation as a whole realizes a net benefit rather than a net loss. Why? Because the matter is macroeconomic not personal; it's policy made on a large scale with the aim of benefitting the nation on a similar scale.

It doesn't bother me that folks criticize a given macroeconomic policy. All such policies have "winners and losers," and we can all be sure the "losers" will always gripe about having lost in the exchange. What I find totally unacceptable is that the gripers do so without perspective and without giving credence to all aspects of the matter.

• Not acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA."
• Acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA. Even though the nation and people on the whole are better off due to NAFTA, I still prefer free trade. Yes, I know restricted trade will cause price increases and trade wars, but I still prefer it to free trade."

After all, the consideration of any national level policy is not about any one or few thousand people, it's about what's best for the overwhelming majority of people. The first bullet's expression ignores that underlying theme; the second one does not. That is why I can at least respect the speaker of the second bullet's thoughts; that person has made it clear they know the full scope of their preference. They aren't not pretending or intimating that what's good for them is good for most other folks. That's honest. There's integrity in it.

Free trade Will even itself out in the long we wittnesed that with Japan, we are witnessing that with China, Mexico is a fluke in that ideology being so close to the U.S.

Its taken along time for the industrial revolution to circle the globe, but it will complete it's circle unless technology stops it in it's tracks with 3 d printers and such.

The TPP is going to build a new economic zone of cheap exploitable labor (Vietnam) that is going to counter rising costs in China. Then there are the other costs associated with free trade like the loss of sovereignty of the peoples governments to protect their own interests against the rapaciousness of the capitalists. There is no end to the desire for more profit.

It likely will, but so what if it does?

• China's workers will become ticked off because they demand higher wages than do Vietnamese workers and companies don't want to pay higher wages. Unskilled U.S. workers' situation won't change merely because the companies seeking low cost labor move from China to Vietnam.
• The price of goods produced by even lower cost laborers will go down or go up more slowly. As a consumer, I'm okay with that. Aren't you?

The price of goods produced by even lower cost laborers will go down or go up more slowly. As a consumer, I'm okay with that. Aren't you?

Not really no, I'm not okay with the exploitation of people.

 

[320 Years of History]

we have to take into account the credibility of the Peterson Institute. The Board of Directors is a who's who of business people who would be the very people who would benefit the most from the added growth of the economy that is supposed to be the upside to the displacement of workers.

Yes, I did cite Peterson Institute's study. Peterson is hardly the only source I cited; moreover, the sources I cited are hardly the only ones that present and analyze (while fully disclosing their methodology) the objective/empirical measures of the impacts of NAFTA specifically or free trade in general and that also attest to the net gains from free trade/NAFTA outstripping the net losses.

Who benefits most and/or who benefits least really doesn't matter so long as most people and the nation as a whole realizes a net benefit rather than a net loss. Why? Because the matter is macroeconomic not personal; it's policy made on a large scale with the aim of benefitting the nation on a similar scale.

It doesn't bother me that folks criticize a given macroeconomic policy. All such policies have "winners and losers," and we can all be sure the "losers" will always gripe about having lost in the exchange. What I find totally unacceptable is that the gripers do so without perspective and without giving credence to all aspects of the matter.

• Not acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA."
• Acceptable to me: "I disapprove of free trade because I lost my job because of NAFTA. Even though the nation and people on the whole are better off due to NAFTA, I still prefer free trade. Yes, I know restricted trade will cause price increases and trade wars, but I still prefer it to free trade."

After all, the consideration of any national level policy is not about any one or few thousand people, it's about what's best for the overwhelming majority of people. The first bullet's expression ignores that underlying theme; the second one does not. That is why I can at least respect the speaker of the second bullet's thoughts; that person has made it clear they know the full scope of their preference. They aren't not pretending or intimating that what's good for them is good for most other folks. That's honest. There's integrity in it.

Free trade Will even itself out in the long we wittnesed that with Japan, we are witnessing that with China, Mexico is a fluke in that ideology being so close to the U.S.

Its taken along time for the industrial revolution to circle the globe, but it will complete it's circle unless technology stops it in it's tracks with 3 d printers and such.

The TPP is going to build a new economic zone of cheap exploitable labor (Vietnam) that is going to counter rising costs in China. Then there are the other costs associated with free trade like the loss of sovereignty of the peoples governments to protect their own interests against the rapaciousness of the capitalists. There is no end to the desire for more profit.

It likely will, but so what if it does?

• China's workers will become ticked off because they demand higher wages than do Vietnamese workers and companies don't want to pay higher wages. Unskilled U.S. workers' situation won't change merely because the companies seeking low cost labor move from China to Vietnam.
• The price of goods produced by even lower cost laborers will go down or go up more slowly. As a consumer, I'm okay with that. Aren't you?

The price of goods produced by even lower cost laborers will go down or go up more slowly. As a consumer, I'm okay with that. Aren't you?

Not really no, I'm not okay with the exploitation of people.

Sorry, but worker exploitation is too far off from the theme of the OP. I'm happy to discuss that with you in a thread that is more directly themed on that topic.